MALTHUSIANISM MISCARRIED : Melbourne Indymedia

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century the term 'racial hygiene' was used synonymously with 'eugenics', which was the term that came to be used for a movement in favour of socially engineering the selective breeding of human beings in order to develop what those movements perceived to be the best attributes or a superior race. There is a continuing problem with this movement in that there has never been unanimous agreement among humans as to what characteristics merited preferential selection. At worst the movement has degenerated into racial holocausts, as with the Nazis in Germany. It is known that governments in the US , Switzerland, France, Australia, China, Russia, and India - to name a few at random - practised covert programs over many years where the mentally ill and others were sterilised at more or less slight excuses. This practice also extended often to minority races, such as Indians, Aborigines, black Africans and to the lower classes. It is probably true to say that reproduction in the mentally disabled remains discouraged at an unofficial level in most countries. The Eugenics movements have involved pro-natalism as much as they have involved pro-birth controllers. Many nationalistic movements that covertly or overtly advocated sterilisation for 'inferior' persons, have also advocated high birth rates. The Nazi movement is a case in point. Some of these movements have attempted to prevent women and men from having access to birth control information or abortion, for instance the Ceau cescu regime in Romania, and some would still like to - e.g. the National Front in France.

It is the element of coercion that is most redoubted in eugenics social movements.

In opposition is the principle that women should have the right to choose whether and when they want children. It is known that women of all cultures have practised abortion and contraception since time immemorial. Permission to assist in such practices and permission to access them has become a powerful subject of social control, which impacts most immediately on women, and particularly on the poorer classes.

Pro-choice movements see anti birth-control movements, like the Right to Life, as coercive in their attempts to remove choice and access from women. In recent times, outside Australia, extreme violence and its threat have been brought to bear against practitioners of abortion and politicians believed to tolerate it by the Right to Life movement.

The Birth Control movement took its initial strength from the neo-Malthusian movement and eugenicist off shoots from evolutionary social theory, perhaps because these were the only organised voices loud enough to be heard above those of government and church.

Inexorably the Birth Control movement split away from the revolutionary and unsavory political complications of the eugenicists and instead found growing strength and mainstreaming in the burgeoning women's movement as women came increasingly to participate in mainstream politics. However, this did not come about until the 1960s.

In 1898 D.G. Ritchie published a book under the pen name of 'Oxoniensis'. Richie, who favoured women's rights and the use of contraception, held the view that marriage should be controlled by the State and that marriage licences should only be available after a medical board certified the prospective couple as having passed rigorous fitness testing. A number of diseases believed to be inherited were classified as making those who had them unfit for marriage. Some examples were tuberculosis, physical disabilities, 'habitual' criminality, drunkenness, and insanity. D.G. Ritchie was in favour of everyone, of any class, having fewer, healthier children.

The attitude of Australian government was initially favourable to this new movement. The invitation to attend the First International Conference on Eugenics in 1912, was accepted at quite a high level, with the former South Australian Premier, Sir John Cockburn, officially authorised to attend. But by 1932, the year of the Third International Conference on Eugenics, government gave the movement a distinct cold shoulder.

In 1929 the Racial Hygiene Association in New South Wales, Australia, organised a congress in which Victoria and Western Australia also participated in a small way. The objectives of the association were 'the teaching of sex hygiene, the eradication and prevention of venereal disease and the teaching of the community on eugenic lines'

Angela Booth was an Australian eugenicist who believed that the most important social problems were caused by low intelligence and insanity, for which she recommended segregation and sterilisation, on the grounds that the 'race' would be doomed if these elements were not excised.

In 1930 the NSW government withdrew its subsidy from the Racial Hygiene Association and, at the Lambeth Conference in England, the Anglican clergy approved the use of birth control. (In the same year Pope Pius XI condemned this as unnatural).

In 1931 the Sydney Morning Herald reported on a pro-eugenics radio broadcast by Cresswell O'Reilly.

In 1933 the New South Wales government restored its $500 subsidy to the Racial Hygiene Association. (Siedlecky p.214) and the Association opened the first Birth Control Clinic.

In 1934 three doctors, Simpson, Herring and Wallace, opened the Mother's Welfare Clinic in Melbourne to advise on birth control and infertility.

The 1935-36 annual report for the Racial Hygiene Association made strident appeals for eugenic policies and reported that the Association had sent a body of representatives to the Minister for Health to ask for the establishment of farm colonies to house the mentally unfit separately from gaols and mental asylums. They also requested sterilisation for severe criminal sex offenders. A Bill for the Segregation and Sterilization of Prisoners had been submitted to parliament by L.O. Martin, but this was shelved.

In June 1935 The Mental Hygiene Society presented two speakers, Dr A.E. Machin, chief medical officer of the Education Department, on segregation of 'the mentally unfit in schools' and Dr J McGeorge, on the 'necessity of stopping the propagation of the mentally unfit'.

In 1935 Dr Frances Harding patented a contraceptive diaphragm for use in the Racial Hygiene Association clinics.

In December 1936 the Racial Hygiene Association established a eugenically styled Marriage Advisory Centre, which conducted pre-marriage tests: general health examinations and special examinations for 'inherited diseases and tendencies'. Not surprisingly these tests never achieved much popularity among the general public.

In 1939-45 the Melbourne Birth Control Clinic closed due to lack of rubber available for diaphragms. For the same reason the Sydney Racial Hygiene Association Clinic also had difficulties. That the government saw fit to allocate rubber so that corsets could continue to be made is an indicator of where its priorites lay at this time.

In 1940 the New South Wales government again withdrew its subsidy from the Racial Hygiene Association. During the 1940s the magazine Woman ran a weekly column on family planning by Dr Norman Haire (under the pen name of Dr Wykeham Terriss), despite many protests from anti-birth control groups.

After the Second World War eugenics became a subject unfit for civilised discussion. With the discovery of penicillin venerial disease became curable, and therefore no longer presented a devastating threat to society.

Prior to syphilis and gonorrhoea becoming treatable with penicillin most Australian States had laws that were especially punitive towards women who contracted these diseases, often causing them to be locked up whilst being treated, although men who were infected were treated on an out-patient basis. It is possible that some of the activity by women in the field of eugenics sprang from a desire to defend their sex from being unwittingly infected by their husbands. The preoccupation with insanity also had a rational basis since 'General Paralysis of the Insane', one of the most common diagnoses in mental hospitals prior to penicillin, was actually the end form of syphilis.

Siedlecky and Wyndham write that "Feminists and doctors were the main opponents of involuntary measures; since their victory, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases has been voluntary in Britain and Australia. The most positive outcome of voluntary measures is that the disease is most likely to be controlled when people are able to come for treatment without fear of reprisals."

In fact Australia's response to the threat of HIV infection was based on this philosophy and has presented an example of successful containment of the infection to the world. The policy towards HIV was to preserve anonymity as a high priority, to make disposable syringes freely available to intravenous drug users, and to alert the population to the fact that HIV could be acquired via contact with blood in any context, not just among homosexuals. There were also attempts to mobilise, enfranchise and support prostitutes and other at risk groups, including intravenous drug users, migrants and homosexuals.

Neo-Malthusianism and Women's Rights to Family Planning
Birth Control Movement moves away from Eugenics

In 1960, in an important move to dissociate itself from eugenics, the Racial Hygiene Association changed its name to the Family Planning Association of Australia.

In 1970 South Australia was the first State to legalise abortion under certain circumstances. Between 1970 and 1971 Family Planning Association Clinics were started in Melbourne, South Australia, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia. Family Planning Australia received a federal grant for work with Australian Aboriginal women.

In 1971, The Female Eunuch by Australian feminist, Germaine Greer, was published.

In 1972 the Women's Electoral Lobby was established in Australia and became very active in Family Planning politics.

In 1972 the Whitlam Government (Labor) came into office. Siedlecky and Wyndham record its activities in the first eleven days in office. The Whitlam Government removed the sales tax on the contraceptive pill and acted to put the pill on the National Health Scheme list (i.e. subsidised drugs). It removed the sales tax on all contraceptives and announced a contribution of $300,000 for international birth control programs. The pharmacy ordinance was changed to remove the prohibition on the advertising of contraceptives in the Australian Capital Territory. Elizabeth Evatt was appointed as a presidential member of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and was later to become Chairman of the Royal commission on Human Relationships and Head of the Family Court.

In 1973 the Federal government granted $200,000 to Family Planning Australia and $100,000 to the Catholic Family Planning Centres. It appointed the first adviser on women's affairs in the world, and introduced a supporting mother's benefit for single mothers not previously able to access a widow's pension.

In 1975, when the national free health scheme 'Medibank' was introduced, it covered all family planning services provided by doctors, including abortion and sterilisation.

Respectability for Family Planning

Professor Francis Ronsin, author of La Grève des Ventres, a history of neo-Malthusianism in France, acknowledges the traditional classification of Malthusians and neo-Malthusians into anti-contraception and pro-contraception, but in his article Contrôle des naissances et morale politique he approaches the subject in an unusual way. He redefines participants in these movements according to their style of political activity and committment, without paying much attention to whether they approved of contraception or not. According to Ronsin, Malthusians tend to be ?liberals? in their broader politics, but neo-Malthusians tend to ally themselves with various streams of social protest, generally of a ?radical? nature, such as sectarian causes like pacifism, temperance, vegetarianism, and, sometimes, feminism.

There seems to have been some truth in this theory in the late 19th century in Melbourne as regards Rusden, Smythe and Windeyer. However, with the era of the Pill and support from mainstream political parties, the modern birth control movement has since become respectable. This movement, fundamentally feminist but stylistically neutral and medically based, eschews the political fringes. It is the anti-birth control movements, like Right to Life, which now find themselves on the fringes in the developed world, although since the marketing of RU486 they have been fighting an increasingly intense rearguard battle.

Study of the rise of family planning and the establishment of clinics and programs, in the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrates the strong role the Labor (socialist) Government played in promoting family planning at both State and Federal Level in Australia. Where State governments were resistive, the Commonwealth provided funding and a situation arose where the States received funding from both State and Federal Government.

Family planning seen as separate from control of population growth in Australia

In 1990 Siedlecky and Wyndham were of the opinion that "control of population growth has not in itself been an objective for Australian governments". Indeed, under the Whitlam government population policy developed into a women's emancipation style approach, which focused on the rights of individuals rather than on the size of nations and societies. Family planning became mainstreamed with government support and at the same time split away, to all official intents and purposes, from the more politically revolutionary stream of neo-Malthusianism.

In 1980, at a seminar jointly sponsored by the Australian Federation of Family Planning Association and the Commonwealth Department of Health, the Minister for Health, Michael MacKellar, confirmed this separation of family planning from the broader aims of population policy in a speech where he said,

"Of the three major population variables - fertility, mortality and external migration - external migration is the only one by which the government can significantly influence population ... The government is primarily concerned with promoting family planning as an important measure of preventative health care."

In 1986 the 'eco'-Malthusian movement, Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, was formed. It sought to combine family planning objectives with overall population policy. Its aims and objectives combined a global and local neo-Malthusian approach, combined with environmentalist aims of lowering consumption and promoting energy efficient technology. Because net immigration in Australia contributes to around half annual population growth, immigration has also become a focus of this group. To some extent this group embodies a ?soft? radical approach on economics and environment. This movement and other similar trends, is a major subject of my larger thesis in progress.

Stephania Seidlecky and Diana Wyndham published their book, Populate and Perish, in 1990. At this time they wrote, "No succeeding government [after Whitlam] has seriously considered withdrawing this support [for family planning], although attempts have been made to limit it."

Ideological Shift against Birth Control under Conservative State and Federal Governments

Since Siedlecky and Wyndham wrote the above, the birth control supportive Labor (socialist) governments have been voted out in a majority of States and, most recently, at Federal level. What previously seemed unthinkable, has taken place. There have been major changes in policy affecting financing of the Family Planning Australia and other birth control clinics in Victoria, under the Kennett State Liberal (conservative) Government 1993- and federally, under the Howard Liberal Government, 1996 - .

Under the preceding Federal (Labour) government, Gordon Bilney, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, increased the family planning component of foreign aid from $3 million to $20 million.

The Liberal (Conservative) government will need to put additional money on top of the Bilney initiatives to avoid the impression of cutting, but in March 1998 concern was increasing regarding the likelihood that this would not happen. The 'multilaterals' such as United Nations Family Planning Asociation (UNFPA) have already been cut back in favor of the 'bilaterals', partially because of a reluctance by government to contribute to some of the areas of population planning they supported, (possibly under pressure from federal anti-birth control senator, Brian Harradine ) and partly also because in the 'bilateral' programs Australia is able to clearly identify her contributions, for instance, by displaying logos. With the 'multilaterals? money went into an anonymous pool. Financing of family planning as part of foreign aid programs was thought to have been influenced in 1997 in order to obtain casting votes from powerfully situated Tasmanian Catholic anti-abortionist, Senator Harradine, of whom columnist, Pamela Bone, has been trenchantly critical.

"The influence of that other independent senator, Brian Harradine, in the way this country is governed grows unhealthier by the day. Having successfully intervened to have funding for poulation programs slashed, prevented Australian women getting access to the 'morning after' abortion pill [RU486] and stopped the appointment of the federal Health Minister's preferred candidate as director of the National Health and Medical Research Council, the senator is turning his attention to immigration matters."

Right to Life lobbying in Australia has been complemented by the activities of Deakin University educated sociologists, Lynette Dumble, Robin Rowlands, and Renata Klein. These women are members of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (Australia) (FINNRAGE). They seem to object to most or all forms of hormone replacement therapy, and hormone-based contraception, abortion and fertility treatment, as being harmful to women's health, but approve of surgical abortion as a tried and true method. They are vehement campaigners against RU486. FINNRAGE coordinators, Laurel Guymer and Renate Klein, in a letter to a newspaper, ?Many doubts about use of morning-after pill?, highlight, as if revealing information purposefully hidden, well known physiological sensitivities and practical considerations regarding administration of RU486. Furthermore they claim the existence of a push to ?vilify what is now called surgical abortion when this method has been safely performed for decades? .

It is thought that the Victorian government's withdrawal of funding from family planning clinics was for financial and possibly for ideological reasons. The State government was on a mission to reduce State debt and had been in conflict with federal government over their respective shares of funding to hospital and medical services.

The idea that there may be an ideological component to the withdrawal of State funds from Family Planning is a conjecture premised on two things. The State Health Minister under which funding was withdrawn was Mrs Marie Tehan, who is a practising Catholic and mother of a large family. A record for caving in to conservative religious pressure seems since to have been born out by the conservative government at Federal level and similar trends have come to light during the March 1998 abortion scandal in West Australia, where there is a new conservative government.

At federal level, as well as strategic reductions in specific areas of family planning in the Foreign Aid program, the government withdrew a proportion of federal funding from Family Planning Australia in 1997 . This and other trends towards reducing Australian and global access to family planning options give the impression of anti-birth control leanings among powerful members of government, including the Prime Minister, Mr Howard and the Minister for Health, Dr Woolridge. There has recently been an active "postcard" campaign by Right to Life aimed at Dr Woolridge , pressuring him to totally defund Family Planning.

RU486 : The final step to Women?s Independence?

RU 486 represents a watershed for women's rights and family planning because it has the potential to bring to a virtual end the need for women to consult with doctors, or indeed, anyone, in planning their reproductive lives. This is because it should eventually enable women to abort themselves with virtually no more trouble than taking the contraceptive pill. Once this state of freedom is achieved, it is anticipated that the whole issue of abortion and contraception will virtually be removed from public combat and the Right to Life will have lost the dramatic backdrop that surgical abortion has been providing. This is the reason why Right to Life and similar groups have brought to bear their heaviest ammunition against RU486.

IN 1988 Roussel-Uclaf withdrew RU486 from the world market in response to anonymous threats to the lives of its staff and their families and threats of boycotts to other products. The French Minister for Health, Claude Evin, ordered the 36% government owned company to resume experimental distribution of the drug, in the interests of public health. As such it remains available to this day to French women, for abortions and for other health uses, such as breast cancer, ectopic pregnancy and endometriosis.

Anti-abortion groups also targeted the US manufacturing company, Hoechst-Roussel Pharmaceutical.

In 1989 RU486 was to have been trialed in Australia. In response to vigorous protests from the Right to Life, the manufacturers initially proposed to restrict its use to cases of foetal death but, in the face of continuing hostility, they abandoned the trial. This represented a major set back for the birth control movement.

On 13 July 1994 the Age newspaper reported that more than 150 women would take part in two trials of RU486 in Melbourne, as part of 14 centres involved in World Health Organisation trials of the drug. The trials were once again halted, this time by Roman Catholic bishops who persuaded the federal health minister that the consent forms did not mention all the explained risks. The Right to Life took the matter to Federal Court, but their case failed. On 11 November 1994, approval for the trials to continue was obtained.

In May 6,1996 the new Liberal (conservative) government Health Minister was reported to be in danger of banning RU486 from use in Australia. There were strong rumours that Senator Harradine had used his strategic voting position to place pressure on the government in this affair. It has also been rumoured that the Prime minister and the Minister for Health are anti-abortion.

The outcome so far is that RU486 is effectively banned, since written approval by the Minister for Health must be obtained and tabled in both houses (including the upper house dominated by the wily Harradine) for use of the drug in non- reproductive related cases. Its use as an abortifacient is not permitted.

Australian Law and Traditional Abortion Methods

In 1992 the Uniting Church in NSW became the first Australian church to officially support legal abortion.

There have been new attempts by the church to have abortion re-criminalised. These have failed so far and their advocates have been reluctant to take their cases to jury trial, since it is widely believed that juries will always refuse to convict on abortion, such is the public sympathy for abortion on demand.

Secular associations have continued to involve themselves in birth control and population issues, with the Humanist Association currently the most active. The Australian Humanist Society has been important in promoting abortion reform law, along the lines of 1967 United Kingdom abortion reform legislation. In 1962 the Humanist Society of New South Wales advocated liberalisation of abortion laws as a remedy to unwanted pregnancies that led to shotgun marriages, illegitimacy and sometimes suicide. In fact Dr John Billings, who popularised the unreliable 'Billings' ovulation method of birth control, wrote of the Humanists, "Despite their soft-sounding name, the Humanists seem eager to espouse measures for the extermination of the weak, such as abortion and euthanasia. They seem also anxious to attack life at its very source by promoting sterilisation." In 1971, against a background of crackdowns on abortion availability, which lead to the Levine Ruling of 1972 in New South Wales, the Humanist Society organised Bridget Gilling, their President and a member of the Council for Civil Liberties, to stand (unsuccessfully) for the seat of Bligh (New South Wales) on a platform of State-sponsored birth control clinics and legal abortion. Inspired by the example of United Kingdom legislation in 1967, the Humanist Society promoted the formation of the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) as well as the Australian Council for Civil Liberties. The Abortion Law Reform Association was present in all States by 1971.

Australian Abortion Law in 1998

However in 1998 the formal position with abortion was that it remained against the law in all States, except where doctors would maintain that the mother's life or mental health was in danger. In Melbourne, this situation was established in the Supreme Court, under the Menhennitt ruling (22 May 1969). In South Australia a Bill to amend the Criminal Law Consolidation Act in 1969 was passed by both houses of State Parliament in 1969. This provided that abortion was not unlawful where a medical practitioner, acting in good faith, judged that for the pregnancy to continue would involve greater risk to life or physical and mental health than if terminated, or where there is a risk of major handicap for the child. The Menhenitt ruling is followed in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). In NSW, under the Levine ruling, (NSW 1972) a judgement passed in the lower court, the definition of mental health may include the effects of economic or social hardship, and the crown is under obligation to prove unlawfulness.

In Western Australia, several attempts were made between 1968 and 1972 to introduce abortion law reform through parliament. This happened almost accidentally, after police raided the homes of abortion counsellors and doctors who worked at a newly established Abortion Information Service. It subsequently became increasingly obvious that the prosecution case was unlikely to succeed and the matter was dropped. Eventually a defacto settlement resembling in practice the outcomes in Victoria and NSW was reached . Things continued in this way for nearly thirty years until, in February 1998, overnight, everything was thrown into question. Drs Victor Chan and Hoh Peng Lee were arrested after a schoolteacher reported that a pupil had said there was a foetus in his mother's refrigerator. Investigating police did find a foetus, which a recently aborted woman had taken home to bury. Opposition Labor Party women Members of Parliament stepped into the fray, led by the high profile and somewhat notorious Dr Carmen Lawrence. She sent a letter to the State Director of Prosecutions, describing any attempt to criminalise the behaviour of doctors performing terminations as a direct attack on women. This was signed by 13 women parliamentarians, none of whom were from the Liberal or National Parties. Street Marches and protests occurred outside the court where the doctors were prosecuted on 18/2/98 . Dr Harry Cohen, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, calling for more liberal abortion laws, stated that 9000 abortions are performed annually in West Australia and that only 90 of those are legal. At the time Cohen was also the President of the West Australian Branch of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population.

Cheryl Davenport, a member of the upper house of West Australian State Parliament, introduced a private member?s bill to decriminalise abortion and shift total responsibility for its regulation to the medical profession. Doctors and the Attorney General, Peter Foss, who was, however, required to draft a rival bill for the conservative government, supported this position. With the help of his conscience vote the "Davenport Bill" passed successfully through the upper house on 20 March 1998. However it still had to pass through the lower house.

On 5 March the Coalition had introduced the rival ?Foss Bill?, which stated:

?201A (1) A person is not criminally responsible under this code for any act done with intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman if procuring a miscarriage is justified and the act is done with reasonable care and skill by a legally qualified medical practitioner.

(2) A woman is not criminally responsible under this code for any act she permits to be done with intent to procure her own miscarriage if procuring the miscarriage is justified and the act is done by a legally qualified medical practitioner.

(3) Subject to subsection (4), procuring the miscarriage of a woman is justified for the purpose of subsections (1) and (2) if, and only if ?

her pregnancy is causing serious danger to her physical or mental health;
serious danger to her physical and mental health will result if the miscarriage is not procured;
she will suffer serious personal, family, social or economic consequences if the miscarriage is not procured;
she has given her informed consent
(4) Paragraph (a), (b) or (c) of subsection (3) does not apply unless the woman has given informed consent or it is impractical for her to do so.
(5) In this section ?informed consent? means consent given by the woman after she has received counselling about the consequences of an induced miscarriage."

Cheryl Davenport accused the Liberal State government of politicising the abortion debate and threatening the goodwill, which had developed between the main parties on this issue.

During the debate Right to life stepped up and focused its activities. Every member of West Australian Parliament received expensive plastic models of foetuses. A clever radio advertisement, featuring a foetal heartbeat that stopped on abortion, ran every five or ten minutes on 6PR. The advertisement had a Melbourne sponsor. Heavy weight activists from Right to Life flew in from as far away as Britain. On 15/3/98 the West Australian newspaper had a powerful cartoon by Alston of a cemetery with a lot of gravestones labelled "unborn baby" . The caption said "The Abortion Debate", and underneath the drawing "Those who couldn't vote". On 16/3/98 ten members of the Legislative Assembly and eight members of the Council signed a letter complimenting Alston on this cartoon. Of those four were female: Members of the Legislative Assembly, Michelle Roberts and Katie Hodson and Members of the Legislative Council, Muriel Patterson and Barbara Halligan.

The Anglican Church came out in force to oppose decriminalisation. Archbishop Peter Carnley, two bishops and two assistant bishops, were critical that resort to abortion appeared to be driven by considerations of personal and social convenience. On 17/3/98 the Pope weighed in with a predictably anti-abortion message directed to West Australian parliamentarians

On the other side, a high profile Labor (socialist) politician, Cheryl Kernot, accused the West Australian Liberal (conservative) government of political cowardice. Hazel Hawke, the popular ex-wife of an ex-Labor Prime Minister, returned to her hometown in West Australia to campaign for decriminalisation of abortion. She also made public the fact that she had had an abortion herself in order to facilitate her husband's early career.

In late-March 1998 the position of West Australian medical practitioners was that they would refuse to perform any abortions unless the operation was decriminalised. The West Australian government's preferred position remained the conservative one of effectively legislating to give West Australia an outcome similar to Victorian (Menhennitt ruling) and New South Wales (Levine ruling) case law.

Post Script 2004

The above article treated the major aspects of Malthusianism in Australia up to March 1998. In 2002 the author completed an MA by Research Thesis entitled The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Swinburne Univ. 2002, http://www.alphalink.com.au/~smnaesp/populationspeculation.htm or on CD from
smnaesp@alphalink.com.au also available from PO BOX 1173 FRANKSTON VIC 3199.

The thesis demonstrated a rise in 'immigrationism and pronatalism' in the English speaking world and linked it to the property development lobby in Australia, the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. It showed however that this property-development-linked growth lobby was not present in France and Western European non-English speaking countries, and that this difference largely explained the benign decline in population growth in those countries since 1974 and the - arguably 'malignant' - growth in the English speaking ones.

The relaxation of growth in Western Europe coincides with a decline in carbon emissions. An associated decline in energy drawdown gives EU citizens better survival chances in the case of petroleum depletion.

In the English speaking countries, the property development lobby for very large populations is supported by the banking-mortgage fund industries, the building material industries, mining and forestry, the irrigation intensification lobby, the water privatisation lobby, and the major newspaper groups ? Murdoch and Fairfax ? which have interests in global property marketing dot coms: http://www.domain.com and http://www.realestate.com. It is the author's researched opinion that these corporatised forces have captured both State and Federal government and the Opposition.

Since approximately 1968, date of the release of that eco-malthusian work, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, and then the international oil crisis, the eco-Malthusian movement, supported by humanists, natural scientists and the conservation movement, sought to restrain growth in population and consumption against increasingly organised opposition from the corporate sector.

In Australia there have been several national enquiries on the environmental impact of different levels of population, consumption and technology. Biological/ecological scientists in the English speaking countries, including the US and Australia regard the impact of these high consumption populations as even more dangerous than that of low technology countries with dense, very numerous populations.

Australian scientific ecologists are probably the leader in this field, but they face increasing censorship from the media and even in government publications. Funding is more and more contingent on meeting corporate approval and the corporate world demands population and consumption growth and does not wish to hear about greenhouse gases, or water and land degradation, except where some money might be made out of technology and infrastructure to mitigate these trends.

The author describes herself as a population, energy, ecology and land-use planning sociologist. Sociologists are traditionally discouraged from investigating the natural world or including the constraints of thermodynamic laws among the social facts they research. If sociologists continue to conform to this 19th century tradition they risk irrelevance. Those who speak out do not find formal support in the academic community, but they find a great deal of informal international support and cooperation from the wide scientific and intellectual community. The social sciences are becoming increasingly sterile in our academic institutions and those institutions are corporatised. Fortunately the internet exists now and there is hope of freeing intellectual and scientific debate from the corporate and mainstream-mediatised grip and knowledge from the constraints of dominant language groups and demographically numerous concentration points ? that is, the media defined market. Vive IndyMedia! Vive exciting scientific and political E-lists!

The author continues to research and write on all the above issues. Most recently she has developed an hypothesis based on genetic population and settlement spacing algorithms in the natural world and similarities in human land-use planning and inheritance systems. Look out for articles entitled "Pacific Islander Land-use planning and Inheritance systems".

SHEILA NEWMAN
smnaesp@alphalink.com.au

THis is an excellent article (particularly the stuff about abortion). THank you for taking the discussion seriously enough to post it here - it is particularly timely with the arseholes posting anti-abortion crap here. I do agree that Australia needs better land-use planning (as you pointed out on the other thread). THere is a lot in here I don't (fully) agree with and some other stuff which I would like to add; but it deserves a thought through response so I will post it in a few days.

One thing to add is that eugenics is alive and well in Australia at the moment. Though this is not openly promoted and not particularly justified on population size grounds; there continue to be regular forced sterilizations (both permament with operations and temporary using implants etc) of the mentally ill and Aboriginals. THere have been about 1000 reccorded cases since 1990 and the real figures are a lot higher - I know personally one individual who this happened to in the mid 90s after a nervous breakdown due to an unplanned pregnancy.

Sheliah Newman must take us all for idiots. Like Pauline Hanson she now belatedly seeks to distance herself from some of her nasty fellow travellers. She even wants to come out as some sort of supporter of Indymedia and opponent of corrupt crony crapitalism.

Her next post will probably detail how all she wants to do with her electoral activities is publize these two laudable aims and that she has not the slightest intention of actually taking a seat in parliament.

Until then I will remain a skeptic on this obfuscating pseudo-scientific fabian socialist fascist.

The tactic of valorizing and prioritizing population growth as an issue ahead of others including economic democracy and freedom of speech is one I will continue to violently argue against as being counterproductive and arse backward's. Running for office is like fucking for chastity.

Sheliah's scientism and methodology might be better employed in the field's of astrology or phrenology.

Just my 2c.

Memo to MIM - with the present full blown fascist laws on the books of all states should all party political posts be automatically hidden?

At the very least a warning might be attatched that no matter who you vote for a fascist is going to get in.

Thank you for yr time.

I support legalisation of RU486, however as I pointed out on an earlier thread there are two sides to the issue.

Firstly it is NOT as safe as a surgical abortion. Both because there is less medical supervision and monitoring and because the chemicals reak havoc on womens bodies. If it was developed further and improved it COULD be a very big step forward for womens control of their bodies - as you point out - and it IS still safer than going through with a pregnancy.

It is useful for women to remain anonymous and not be seen at abortion clinics - and has been succesfully used on the abortion ships for countries where abortion is illegal. However I see it as a symptom of a sexist society that women have to use less safe methods of abortion out of fear of persecution.

Because this article has little to do with population-control as such I will bring up any issues which I have with that aspect of it in the article I keep saying I will right about Australian population control issues.

This sort of ' scientific ecology' belongs in the same loony bin with ' transcendental fascism'...actually it could even win Kerosene Shelia a Vogel prize for literature!

How are these nuts getting through the education system?

Is it because of rampant quasi-marxist post modernism?

Certainly seeing so much red holocaust denial in operation at institutions like RMIT ( Vietnam ) and the UNSW ( China ) might lead certain fissured ceramics to worry less about brown fascist holocaust denial.

This ahirstorical situation would be comparable with Japan where you wont find a lot of inconvienient facts.

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man but surely our education system is failing today?

" Fascism is on the march!"

George W. Bush

" Poor bugger my country..."

Professor rat

Like I said before she has got a lot of interesting stuff here particularly about abortion rights.

The stuff about "scientific ecology" though is pretty dodgy. It strikes me as a little too much like those people who study ducks and fruit flies to prove that gang rape is a natural (therefore ok) thing in humans. I agree with the sentiment of using scientific *methods* like computer modelling etc with planning and sociology, however confusing fruit flies with humans is not scientific. There is a big difference beteen humans and rabbits, flies etc.

Usually these things are just picked at random to make philosophical assertions sound scientific and say more about the psychological make up of the writer than about humans generally. Maybe Sheila would like to give a little more detail about her research. After all she is asking us to vote for her so it seems reasonable to question her.

Great article, hair raising in some ways, was the Family Planning Association of Australia REALLY called the Racial Hygiene Association!! and RTL campaigns on abortion in WA, these international lobbies are yet another pox of globalisation.

Am enthusiastic about authors sociology/NRM line of research, we'd better hope there is a science there to be found or we'll be operating even-more-blind when making adjustments to our new circumstances (climate change+resource depletion+population).